Short: Theft of Shergar

short one. That's really what it is. Because for any of our listeners, because because we're getting lots and lots of new listeners who may not know what we've been doing for a while. We always go into mysteries and we like to have a good hour plus show, but some stories just aren't that long. So sometimes there's ones that we want to give you that well, they're gonna be a shorty, but we're just going to take him anyway, is right. They're a little bonus episode. I call him shorts,

Joe calls him bonus. What do you want to call it? Except I make the website post, so it's the Shorts. Now on to our story. We are going to talk about Sugar, who was born Ireland in eight and theoretically died in nineteen three. Possibly, Well that's the unsolved mystery parties because I mentioned Sugar as a horse, right, No, everybody knows that I didn't know that horse, of course. Sorry. It was actually a well known horse, but I've never

heard him before. Actually it's because we live in the States. If you were in Britain or Ireland, you knew Sugar. It was like the little Sebastion of the United Kingdom. I would actually say the Sea Biscuit, because this horse was huge, book over the racing scene, and everybody knew the horse's name. It was yeah, alright, okay, well let's uh, let's for all our folks who don't know who Sugar is. Sugar was the champion race horse of Night one. It

was a very recognizable bay colt. He had a very unique white blaze on his face, and a blaze is if you see a horse that's got the kind of a white stripe from their forehead to their muzzle, that's a blaze, very unique shape to It had four white socks, and I really I kind of find this endearing. Had this weird habit when racing of lolling his tongue out of the side of his mouth, kind of like a

dog out the window. Yeah, it's very cute. Well, in one, Sugar famously one the Dirt Steaks, which is a very very major race in England, and you wanted by ten lengths, which is quite a huge lead. It is a very huge lead for our listeners who don't watch horse racing. Me. Okay, all length means the distance of a horse. So you've got horse one and you've got horse too, and if you can fit a horse between them, that is considered

one length. Does that make sense? Yeah? The question I have is if horse A is in the lead and horse bee is right behind him, so horse bees nose is right about even with horse's. But there is that doesn't that mean that the then you get the decimals of a length. It's kind of like you know, a millimeter, You get into decimals of millimeter right then you you break it down. But lengths are if you a horses x long, that is one x between horse one and

horse two. Very it's as simple as that. Okay, Okay, Sugar did it in ten lengths, so that is ten horses, which is a massive, massive lead depending on his competition. But I mean, obviously they would have been fairly evenly matched. It was a pretty even match. I mean, let's be honest. He was named European Horse of the Year, which they just don't give away. So that tells you right there how good he was. He was a three year old horse.

He was at the end of his racing career. His horses race from one to three and then they're done. So at that point they said, well, we're going to turn him into a stud, and Sugar was taken to bellam and He Stud, which is a stud farm in County Kildare, Ireland. He stayed there quite happily, siring offspring for the next year. Lucky horse, he lucky horse. There's a lot of stud jokes I want to make here, but I'm not gonna make any of them. I'm just gonna give one basic term, which is to mate with

a horror a male. To mate with a female is called covering. He covered thirty four mayors that year, with a pretty hefty fee going for every one of those things too. People were paying up to eighty thousand pounds per curling per coupling, thank you. I was trying to figure out how to say the sad pounds per try per try Okay, Well, here's the thing. He went that that's eighty thousand pounds in two money. That's equivalent of four hundred eighties six thousand pounds today or three hundred

and seventy five thousand U S. Dollars today. That's an incredible bull amount of money. So that he was making his owners just money hand over fist. Now, one bit of information that I do want to get into before we get into the mystery surrounding him, is how his ownership was divvied up. Shargar was Sugar was owned by Prince kareem Aga con He after that season, decided that he would sell off shares. He wouldn't need to sell the horse entirely. He just sell shares of the horse

for a lot of money. For a lot of money. He sold thirty four shares. He kept six for himself. I don't know how this is, so I don't know if that means that he sold twenty eight shares so there's a total of thirty or thirty four, or if that means that he sold thirty four shares plus his sixth equal forties you would think. But he was selling the shares for a quarter of a million pound at the time, which is a that's that's that's almost ten million pounds that he sold that horse for. That's a

huge amount of money. So again he is just breaking in cash. And I'm assuming though that it probably was a good investment because I'm assuming that he would be he would be, you know, trying to impregnant lots and lots of mayors for years to come, and so I'm assuming they'd make up, would have a stead at effective stud, will have a stud career of anywhere from five to fifteen years. That's worth investing two fifty thousand in when you know you're going to get all that money back

in two seasons. Yeah, Yeah, it's it's a great investment. Well, here's what happens with our racehorse. It's an eight thirty at night on the eighth of fed you're Jim Fitzgerald. He is the head groom of Bellaminny Stud. He opens the door and he finds three men in bla clavas, which is a scheme mask at the door. They've got guns on him and they say they want him to take him to the horse. He goes ahead. He does it. Specifically, he takes him right to share gar because that's what

they say. They want the fans of sugar. H No, this this was not a fan situation. No, I know for sure it was not. Because they immediately said, we're taking this horse and we want two million pounds to get him back. So they were kidnapping. Horse napping. Yeah, it would be horse napping. You're right, what idiot wrote kidnapping when uh, when Fitzgerald got to the stables, there were another five men in masks there, so we've got a total of eight men with guns. They load the

horse up. They put Fitzgerald in another car, and they were prepared by the way. They they had a horse trailer. They had a trailer. They put him in a trailer. Wasn't like they put him in the back of a hatchback or something. They put him in a horse trailer

and they took off. But they put Fitzgerald in a separate car drove for what the accounts say a few miles, three four miles, I don't know, before they finally stopped, told him to get out of the car and not to look behind him because they would be there and they would shoot him, and he had to just walk until he got to the next town, which he did, because, well, if a guy with a gun says go that way and don't look back, I'm going to do that. It's

simple logic. When Fitzgerald got back home, because he got to the next town, in the next town and then got it right home, he made the appropriate phone calls first to his chain of command, which then lit off us series of phone calls up the chain of command for everybody involved. The weird thing is, though the cops didn't get called till four o'clock in the morning. Yeah, it seems kind of silly. I mean, why not The first call I would have made was to the freaking cops. Yeah,

but that didn't happen. I don't know why. Maybe if you're rich, you employ your own investigative services first. Well, and if you have twenty plus people involved in that ownership situation, I imagine that gets even messier. So it's not like I can say I own this horse. I know this guy, he'll look into it. You can if you're the major stakeholder. Well no, no, Agacon was the major stakeholder. I think he had he had six shares, Yeah, but only six out of forty. So if nobody but

nobody else had more shares than him. Yeah, so to shareholder had four shares, which again was a million pounds, so go figure. Nobody else had more shares than he did. Anyway, so they called the police up, Yeah, they call the police. Uh. The thing was, of course, Sargar was very popular with the public because he was a local horse. He had won this giant race and everybody knew about it, so

the police it's a very public investigation. The police are trying to do everything possible to cross their teas and got their eyes. They've got to know what's going on. They're trying to turn the area upside down to find the horse. But unfortunately the area also turned to a media circus, so we've got tons and tons of reporters with cameras and microphones running around. So it did turn

into an absolute zoo, no pun intended. And then the cops kind of dropped the ball in the whole thing, although they did h and there's some issues with the the investigation that we'll talk about here briefly once we get into the theory section or just before that. But the thing is, what was weird is is, of course i'd said that you know, all those shares had been sold, so now shared oars owned by the syndicate. Well, the syndicate couldn't obviously negotiate for his ransom because it's so

many people got an agreement, I'm sure. Yeah. Well, somehow three journalists who were involved in the horse racing scene were selected to be their point contact negotiators, which are selected by the kidnappers or by the syndicate. I don't have an answer to that. I could never figure out. I think it was the syndicate, but I don't know for sure because it's just kind of it's a little ephemeral in the way that it's written that I just

I'm not positive. But these three journalists are selected. They are spirited away to the countryside. They're locked up into a building with the cops. So the cops are recording all the conversations like it's a very major deal, but of course they keep I think it goes on for three days, if I remember correctly, they're having these phone

calls negotiating for money. Negotiations are going nowhere. On the fourth day, the negotiators that the journalists, they get a phone call out of the blue, like this is a weird phone call that just says, Sharkar has had an accident and he's dead, and they hang up and they never make contact again. That seems rather rude. YEA, by the way, I took your horse, your hamster, I was house sitting. I mean that's what That's what it equivalates

to me. It's really weird. But but to this day, nobody knows a if he truly is dead or alive. Because horses live to be can live to be years old, So technically he could still be alive today, the very aged horse, he wouldn't be studying anything he was in I guess it could be he technically could still be alive. There are some insanely old horses. But we also don't know who took him, which is where things start going kind of. There are some strong suspects. There are some

strong suspects. As a question, did he actually successfully sire horses? He did? He did. He covered thirty four mayors that first season. One of the mayors that he covered u birth of foal who eventually became a champion racehorse of his own. So he was successful and only one or successful, and he successfully sired offspring in more than one mayor. It's just one of those one of those instances created a true champion force. That's my theory out the window

then cinema. Okay, yeah, no, he he definitely, he definitely had what it took. I see it. I think I see where you're going. Somebody stole them just so they could, like, you know, the fact he wasn't that great. Part of the syndicate was like, well he's not actually making babies, so we'll just you know, pretend like he got stolen. Should like if you shooting blanks the whole time, you know,

he he did. He definitely created a lineage. Yeah. But also they not all of the not not all the members of the syndicate had total full insurance on him. Oh yeah, you're absolutely right. Um, the insurance thing is huge, and let's go ahead and talk about that now. We'll talk a little bit more about the syndicate after this. But do you want to talk about the insurance issue? Well, yeah, I think that I'm trying to think of what it is now. And in other words, that some of them

were covered for say loss or death. Yeah, but the since the since the horse disappeared and they couldn't prove the horse was dead, the insurance companies wouldn't pay, and so you know, the caveat to that is, well, I'm not going to continue to pay for the policy on a horse that I believe is dead. So then they stopped paying for the policy. In therefore the policy expired. So once you reach that expected lifespan of the horse, you would think that they would eventually have to pay out.

But all these people were like, do you know how expensive that freaking insurances? It's not worth continuing to pay for it. Yeah. Yeah, So anyway, that's that's why I think that the syndicate wouldn't do away with wouldn't do it with Sugar, because you know, if there'd been a plan to do that, then everybody would have gotten all gotten their insurance all beefed up, they would have gotten

that kind of insurance. Well, and yeah, Aga Khan would have would have just rushed right forward, and I'm sure there would have been you know, he would have been the first one at the pay line. But here's the other thing about the syndicate is they actually had they negotiated with the ransomers, but they never actually intended to come to an agreement and pay Do you know why, Yeah, Well, it's the same reason we have no negotiations with terrorists now.

It's because because if you pay a ransom or then they're just going to get more the same yep, which meant that every race horse in the UK, Ireland, Europe, that whole area, they were all suddenly at threat to be stolen and ransomed off. And I guess I assume that if you own steak in one horse, you probably own a steak in a couple of horses. Prince he he loves racing horses, he loves them. He didn't just

own this one horse. He owns lots of horses. So let's just yeah, somebody just says, you know what, I'm just gonna pick on that guy's horses. That's a bit huge pool of horses just to go after. So yeah, of course they're not gonna pay. It's a terrible thing. But of course they're not gonna pay. You can't blame them. Besides, what, you know that you don't have any guarantee you're gonna get your horse back any way. That's and that's that's

the worst part. You will not necessarily get your property back. That all having been said, because you know this is supposed to be a short and yet we can't shut up. We're going to go into the theories. Let us do that. Our first theory is that the culprit. All the theories, by the way, they're all who stole the horse. So the first theory is that he was stolen or kidnapped by the IRA. The IRA has been fingered for this by just about everybody out there, including the syndicate that

owned Shared are He. They they came out and made a press release saying they were sure that the IRA was responsible for it, and it's there's a little bit of evidence for this. There is because it kind of does seem like they they were super active at the time. They were trying. They were always trying to figure out ways to to raise money to buy guns and munitions. And if you think about it, a two million pound bonus check goes a long way in bullets dynamite. Yeah,

it would. They also would have the connections to find those sleepy little farms out in the middle of nowhere where you could with a barn that you could just stash a horse. I had lots of sympathizers, lots of sympathizers, but one thing that really kind of keyed people into think that the IRA was responsible was what happened in the negotiations because they were all done by phone, and none of the all but one, I should say, all but one of the phone calls, which there were quite

a few, lasted less than nine seconds. Seconds was the time that was required to trace a phone call. Your common dumb criminal is probably not likely to know that. And organized group that is subversive or you know, working against the law, is going to be very aware of that. But in night, not at this time, Not at this time was that as known. I mean, we see all this all the time. But I remember in the eighties

it was the dukes of hazards and stuff. It wasn't I gotta stay off the phone for this x amount of time to get traced. I mean that wasn't doesn't take him ninety seconds anymore in real life, So not anymore according to uh so what is uh it's not see us. There's some other show it's it takes forty seven seconds or something stupid. But they knew this and they would not stay on the phone any longer than that, okay, fair.

And then also there was there was some IRA, a guy that wrote a book right, Sean O'Callahan, Yeah, Okallahan, he was. He was the i RA, a double agent. I don't know why he became a double agent, but long story short is that he ended up writing a book about his time in the IRA, and one of

his chapters is about Shargar. According to his book, he says, when he realized that the IRA was not going to get paid, in other words, they were getting jerked around, they had to figure out what to do with his horse, and their first and their first idea was well, let's just let him go, except because the countryside was such a media circus and there were people everywhere looking for the horse, they just couldn't turn him loose on a

road because they're they're safe houses were near that, They're they're sympathizers were near there. So what ends up happening is some genius decides that what we should do is to help with it, we should just kill the horse. And according to a Callahan, that ends up what happened. And I'm not gonna I'm gonna spare you the gruesome details, but I'm just gonna say the two men with machine guns go into a stall and then later on, no horse walks out what they did with Yeah, it's it's

it's despicable. But what happened to share body after that, we don't know. I mean, it's a lot of that's a lot of material to dispose of. Yeah, I know. I've heard that there are a lot of large bogs are in that area, so that seems to be the prevalence. Thinking as he got pushed into a bog. I can't imagine though, that all of him got pushed into the same spot in the bog, because horses are fifteen hundred pound animals and that's a lot of animal. Yeah. I

didn't want to think about that either. It's I don't either, But I'm saying that he probably got just posited in several locations if this theory is correct. Um, But you know what, let's let's move on to something that is weird but much happier, which is General Gaddafi. Do you mean Colonel Kadafi? Well, is it colonel or general? I've seen him called bolls uh No, I don't think he ever raised his rank beyond colonel. Interesting, and Internet called

him general. That's why I was asking. An interesting fact about Kadafi is that his childhood hero was was Colonel gabaldil Nasser of Egypt, and he really deeply admired him and he modeled so when when he staged this coup along with his fellow officers, I believe he was a captain in the Libyan Air Force, and so when he became in charge, he immediately bumped his rank to colonel because that was that was Bill Nassa's rank, and that any as far as I know, he kept it at

colonel the rest of his life, well, as long as he had a military title. That is. Okay, Well, all I know is I've seen him called General Goffey. But let's let's explain what I've actually promoted himself. Let's explain here. If you don't know who good off he is, which some people don't, was well was Oh yeah, that's right, it was. It was. He was as Joe talked about, he had a coup, he then became the literal leader in Libya. He also he had a thing for race horses.

You know, I loved race horses, you know, I mean that kind of stuff is really popular in the Middle East. It is. Horse racing is a big thing. A lot of Arabs are crazy about horses. Well, not at all unusual. Yeah, no, it's not at all. But according to this theory, what happens is he brokers a deal. This kind of ties in with the last one. He brokers a deal with the IRA, says that horse is awesome and I want

that horse. The IRA then goes in and steals the horse for him in exchange for either a money or be munitions. I'm sure that he would have had a cool hardware to give him. You would have had hardware. Now, how they get that horse out of the country, I don't know, but have to put him on a ship. You're not going to put him on a plane, right, you can, but probably not. But here's the thing. Also,

what what is it that they call it? They the early eighties were called I think they call them the tough Time or the rough time where things were not good and we're talking about in Ireland, in Ireland and it was easy to bribe, and the pretty creative name I know, But everything that I've read about that, whether it was in relation to the story or not, they used that name. So people had to do what they had to do. So I can see it being pretty easy to pay off some guy at the port get

a horse on it. And it's not like there's not a lot of boats in Ireland, exactly a lot of boats. Yeah, I've got to say, of the theories, I hope this one actually is a true one, because you know, Sugar, I want to live you. I'm sure cut off he took really good care. I'm sure he got lots of

apples and pets and brushings and all of that. Well, the bit of this theory that actually could possibly have some uh some truth to it is if you think about, well, wait a minute, they've got to take a horse trailer and they've got to get it to a shipping port, and everybody knows that the horses missing, so there's gonna be this giant search. Except whoever did this was smart enough to take the horse the night before uh goths

racehorse sale, which is a major racehorse sale. So there are there are vehicles hauling trailers with horses in them running all over the place. Where where by the way, you know, that's a very good question. And I didn't even think to look. I read all about goths, but I didn't think about it look exactly where it was in relation to the stud farm. It didn't happen to

have like a look in or near a seaport. You know. Again, I didn't even think to look at it, But all I know is that it caused tons and tons of horse trailer traffic around the area which would disguise their movements. So that's interesting because would your average Irishman know about golfs or would that be something that horse owners and horse traders would know about golfs has From what I can tell, they have a lot of auctions, and it looks like they have about three or four horse auctions

a year. There's a race horse, there's a mayor auction, like, there's a bunch of big horse auctions. So they're they're pretty well known if you have any interaction with the horse community. I don't think that it's a once a year thing that if you weren't in the know, you would have no idea about, especially if you were somewhere in that area. Because I may be wrong, but I got the impression that it was at least in County killed there. But I could be completely off on that.

I got the impression of that, but I could be completely wrong. But let's not speculate anymore on that. Let's move into our final theory, because again this is a short. We've only got a couple of short theories, and this one is the funniest theory. This is that the New Orleans mafia took the horse. That makes sense? Was it ahead? Is this? Is that a Godfather joke? No, The basic idea is this one is the background on its similar

to the Gaddafi one. But the idea is that at some point the mafia had a horse deal with aga Con and that deal went sour, and so when retribution, they stole his favorite horse, his his big money horse, and did what it took it and ended what that. I don't care that they don't care they took it. It could be in a petting zoo at this point. I don't know, Joe. It's just the the theory doesn't go any farther than that. That's all there is to that particular theory is that they said, hey, you screwed

us on this deal. We're gonna screw you. We took your horse. So did the eight man with guns that stole sugar. That they have Cajun accents, not that I know of. Okay, there's yeah, I don't know how many guys in balacla I means, but nothing about their accents showed up, which makes me think they had local dialect accents. They might have hired some locals local hug. Yeah, but that's all we've got on on this particular one, which the guy like I, I prefer the Goodaffi theory because

that means that he was happily being a horse. This might be the very first time we've ever had consensus. Yeah, yeah, well you know it takes it takes a nice animal to do it. Now, which one do you think is most likely the first one? I know? Me too, sadly. Okay, well, if you want to learn more about this particular episodes details, you can look those up on our website, Thinking Sideways podcast dot com. Leave comments. Like I said, the links are going to be there, and all other episodes are

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are on Patreon at Patreon slash thinking sideways. So all the details, all the detail is about the episode nickel An episode. Oh yeah, So that's all the details about how patreart works and how it worked for the show are directly there, and of course there's a link to that on our website. I think I've got all of it there, guys, And I miss something, all right, I don't think so. Well, this was not the shortest short ever, but we are going to go ahead and wrap this

one up and we will talk to you again real soon. Everybody. Hi, guys,